GAUTENG, SOUTH AFRICA — With a lot of help from proud mothers, 32 pre-primary school children from the Gereformeerde Skool Dirk Postma in South Africa managed to collect 220 000 cans.
Their effort — which earned them the title of Gauteng province overall winners — was part of a campaign in Gauteng and the Western Cape to set a Guinness world record for the most cans collected for recycling in one month.
Together the participating schools managed to collect 1,971 026 cans for four Collect-a- Can plants.
Excited children in the two provinces took up the challenge to set a new world record for the most cans collected during the month of October.
Headmistress of the Gereformeerde pre-primary school, Anschen Wyma, said: “We had been collecting cans for years.
“But in September they sent us the challenge and told us about being part of the attempt to set a world record.”
The school went through the onerous process of receiving cans every day , and the teachers took on the task of weighing them and keeping track of the number of cans each child collected.
Though the competition is over and the school has won the regional prize of R25 000, the can collecting frenzy has not died down for this small school.
The school operates using the money it receives from collecting cans.
Wyma says: “Because the Collect-a-Can initiative runs for nine months, we always participate to supplement the little funding support we get from the neighbouring primary school.
“From this money we have managed to build many of the things we have here.”
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